Summary

Assisted Suicide Word on the Week 17th May 2025.
It’s not the topic one would want to address on a fine summer’s day but it was hot news in the UK this week. A similar Bill here did not progress in the last Oireachtas. Let’s pray the plans for it will not be revived.
In the UK the Bill met considerable opposition and was postponed till 13th June. Unfortunately, they had time to rejected an amendment aimed at protecting hospices and care homes from being forced to take part in assisted suicide.
Here the annual 5 Km walk for the victims of suicide took place in Dublin on 10th May. It is Pieta's (the suicide help-line) Flagship event and is appropriately called, Darkness into Light. The statistics only tell part of the story. Suicide casts a long shadow wherever it arises in society.
Unfortunately we have dispensed with the idea of the sanctity of human life. We no longer think of humans made in the image of God (Genesis 1 verse 26). We do not think it is always wrong to kill – we now have 10,000 abortions annually.
We have sold our souls to the goddess ‘choice’. In exercising the ‘right’ of choice we look to no higher authority than ourselves. The law ‘Do not murder’ (Exodus 20 verse 13) has become subject to the expectant mother’s choice.
Choice violates the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God over all human life from conception to death. Jesus made the case clear when He was questioned on paying tax. He got a coin and asked whose image did it bear? Caesar’s! His reply was to give to Caesar the things that are Caesars’ and to God (our lives) the things that are Gods’ (Matthew 22 verse 21).
It has been said with a great deal of truth that abortion has paved the way for assisted suicide. Having overcome the difficulty that killing is always a sin, now we can further reason that we have already escaped the womb safely! But when it comes to assisted suicide, it lies ahead of us and we could even contemplate being in that situation ourselves!
The old joke of the doctor’s secretary saying to you in the waiting room, “the doctor will kill you now” is not so funny any longer. All we have to do for it to become a reality is nothing!
Fortunately, the Lord knows each of us intimately including our final destiny; ‘Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139 verse 16).